Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

“ W hat glorious weather!” sighed Victoria. “I’m glad I’m not as pale as your Penelope or poor Lady Annabelle. It would be dreadful to have to hide away under hats and parasols from such divine sunlight!”

“Sheltering from the sun can be inconvenient,” Penelope admitted with a smile and a twirl of her white linen parasol, “but far less painful than sunburn. Blonde or red hair can be a curse in such weather.”

“Victoria will be as brown as a hazelnut by the end of the summer,” commented Maxwell, walking between them. “She always is.”

“All the better to scare away unwanted suitors,” Victoria remarked, prompting amusement from the rest of the group, including Adam Finch, who was walking a little behind them as they entered Highgate Fair.

“I feel that today is going to be a wonderful day,” Penelope declared as she looked at the colors and sights of the fair before them and took in the music, sounds, and smells of the different stalls.

She spotted swings, a roundabout, and seesaws already teeming with local youths. A climbing pole, a strength test, and an arm-wrestling champion invited gentlemen to pay their coins and try their chances.

Meanwhile, a sign for the bearded lady caught Maxwell’s eyes, and he looked back at Adam with a mischievous question on his face.

“Is Mr. Finch particularly keen to see the bearded lady?” Penelope queried in puzzlement.

“Only if she can live on her wits,” Maxwell said, and both men laughed as though at some private joke, drawing further bemusement from Penelope and a critical glance from Victoria.

“Personally, I see no humor in the display of an individual with a likely imbalance of humors in her blood. Would you laugh at some other medical condition, Brother?”

“I am suitably chastised,” Maxwell said to Victoria, easily accepting her criticism. “The joke was originally one about marriage and finding Adam a suitable bride. He said he must have a woman who can live on her wits, and this seemed only an extreme example of that.”

“I was thinking more a woman writer or advanced governess,” the lawyer added in an apologetic tone.

“In that case, you would be better off seeking my advice than my brother’s,” Victoria said. “I know several such ladies who might welcome a proposal from a suitable gentleman, and I could effect introductions. Miss Snow is from a very accomplished family in Marylebone…”

“Maxwell, you must slow down the horses!” Adam Finch pleaded with a smile. “I thought we were only joking when we first touched on this subject, but now your sister seems likely to marry me off before Christmas.”

“Look, there’s Annabelle and Stephen,” Penelope said with a laugh. “You are rescued from imminent matrimony, Mr. Finch, unless Victoria recruits Annabelle to her cause, and then I could do nothing more to help you. Let us join them.”

Their little party had even more fun than Penelope had expected or hoped.

“Push me higher, Maxwell, I’m slowing down!” Victoria insisted.

“And me! And me!” piped up Annabelle on the swing beside her while Penelope contented herself with a less adventurous height and pace.

Despite Stephen’s reservations, Maxwell and Adam Finch pushed all three ladies on the swings and roundabout several times, provoking screams of laughter and extended explanations from Victoria on the force of gravity, Newton’s laws, and the nature of angular momentum.

Mr. Finch’s marital prospects proved another source of amusement for the group and a test for Stephen, Lord Emberly’s dignity.

“Oh, this pie definitely,” Penelope said, swallowing her small taste of Number Seven in a long line of pies on a counter where customers could pay to taste and vote on the best entry from among local Highgate women.

“I agree,” Victoria concurred, Annabelle nodding along beside her. “It’s even better than Number Two, don’t you think Maxwell? Quickly, add your vote to the ballot. The man will be announcing the winner shortly.”

The duke also nodded, chewing appreciatively and then looking to Adam Finch with a twinkle in his eye.

“Adam, I think we’ve found your future spouse. It must be the lady who made this pie. Think of coming home to such fare every day.”

“Yes!”

“You have no choice, Mr. Finch. Prepare to propose!”

“Can anyone lend him a ring?”

The teasing descended into gales of laughter and applause when the lady in question finally stepped forward to claim her prize a few minutes later and turned out to be over eighty. Stephen Elkins stood slightly to one side, looking as though he was wishing himself anywhere but at Highgate Fair. Penelope almost felt sorry for him.

A small parade of farmyard animals dressed in human clothing provided considerable fuel for the Crawford siblings to jest further over Adam Finch’s marital prospects. The sight of several couples disappearing into nearby hedgerows made Maxwell and Adam Finch laugh while steam almost came out of Stephen Elkins’ ears.

“Well, really,” the very proper young man huffed, trying to steer his younger sister away from the courting couples.

“Where are they going?” Annabelle asked innocently, looking back over her shoulder. “Is there more to the fair out in those fields?”

“They’re going to pick wildflowers, I expect,” said Victoria gaily, taking Annabelle’s arm and changing the subject before Lord Emberly exploded. “Let’s go to the shooting gallery. I want to beat all the men at their own game.”

Victoria might be a bluestocking, but she clearly loved fun and was very physically capable. She even beat Maxwell in shooting down the rows of tin soldier cutouts, winning a jar of preserved plums that she announced she would keep on her desk and eat between meals.

“Arm wrestling, Maxwell,” Victoria pointed out to him with a grin, clutching her jar of plums. “There’s a chance for you to win a prize too. Maxwell is very strong, Penelope. I bet he could do it.”

“I know, he could.” Penelope smiled, although she supposed that the sailor with muscular arms who had beaten all comers so far would be no pushover.

She was very aware of Maxwell Crawford's strength, both from his easy handling of Henry Atwood and the ease with which he had shown himself capable of lifting her in the privacy of his bedroom during the now-missed intimacy of their first week together.

“Are you going to give it a try, Maxwell? Or are dukes too grand for such ordinary entertainments?” asked Adam Finch, seeing an opportunity to return some of his friend’s earlier teasing. “Look, you could win a gift for Duchess Penelope.”

He nodded to the latest prize on a stand near the arm-wrestling table — a cheap-looking tie pin and a bunch of tulips. To the dismay of Stephen Elkins, Maxwell took up the challenge, paid his coin, and cast off his coat.

“Your name, sir?” asked the affable mustachioed stallholder.

“Maxwell Crawford.”

“Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, this match will be worth watching. We have two men of considerable size and strength at the table, but who will triumph? The present champion, Able Seaman Arthur Hurley, who has beaten five men and won a bottle of port, or our challenger, Mr. Maxwell Crawford? Take your positions please, gents!”

To the crowd’s disappointment, the match surprisingly ended quickly in Maxwell’s favor. A few young bloods at the back booed.

“Just because he’s a duke!” yelled someone. “That’s why you let him win. Couldn’t have done it on his own merit, could he?”

“Yeah, he’s the new Duke of Walden. The nobs are taking all the prizes, like they always do.”

The defeated sailor looked cross at this accusation that he had folded before the rank and glared at the hecklers with hands on his hips.

“I never knew he was a duke, did I? He never said he was!”

Maxwell himself seemed more philosophical.

“It’s not a fair accusation,” he said, standing beside his vanquished opponent. “Especially not to you, Mr. Hurley, but that man does have a point about merit. You’d wrestled at least five men before me while I was still fresh. I think I should wrestle another challenger before I qualify for any prize. Are you volunteering, sir?”

This last question was addressed to the principal heckler in the crowd, who found himself pushed forward by his companions. He had the beefy build and clothing of a farm laborer dressed in his Sunday best. Surprised and none too happy, this man found himself quickly seated at the table with Maxwell while the stall holder announced another round.

This time, the contest lasted longer and was harder to predict. Each man almost seemed to have the advantage at certain points before losing it again. Strong and stubborn, neither yielded, although their arms were shaking and their faces red with effort. When Maxwell eventually won the day, the shouts of jubilation from the crowd were loud.

This time, the heckler looked at Maxwell with grudging respect.

“That were a fair win,” he announced, to further applause, “Duke or not.”

Maxwell insisted on the man taking the tie pin while he took the tulips and presented them to Penelope, damp, sweating, and laughing. He looked so very happy and handsome and pleased to be with her. In law, he was her husband. Why must he keep from her bed and be so distant when they enjoyed one another’s company so much in every way?

She did not know how much of her yearning was written on her face, but when Maxwell lowered his head and kissed her on the lips, Penelope gave a small cry of surprise. They were in a public place, and Maxwell was in his shirt sleeves, but still, she wanted him.

“Are you well?” he asked when he raised his head.

“I like your strength,” Penelope blurted in confusion, looking around and finding that their friends had, perhaps tactfully, vanished. “Well, I like all of you, Maxwell, but you do look so well when…”

“Ah,” he said, interrupting her words with a gentle stroke of her face that made her blood race. “Do you wish I wasn’t a duke right now? Imagine if I were just an ordinary man and could carry you off into one of those hedges over there where we have seen several couples vanish.”

“Maxwell,” she said, both puzzled and aroused by these strange statements.

She did wish it in some way, but it was impossible. Not only due to propriety but also because she knew that at any moment, Maxwell would remember something more important and pull away from her again.

“Kiss me again, Maxwell,” Penelope said then, hoping that perhaps the spell would last a few more minutes before it broke.

Puzzled but smiling, he complied, and Penelope felt tears coming to her eyes even as her blood burned and her body throbbed for him.

“What’s wrong, Penelope?” Maxwell asked when he detected the tears on her cheeks, but she only shook her head and laid her cheek against his lapel.

Nearby, a young couple passed arm in arm, a little disheveled and likely returning from the hedgerow. They might have been a young farmer and a housemaid.

“I love you, Liza,” said the man earnestly as the rosy-cheeked young woman turned her dark head with a smile and kissed him.

“I know you do, Harry,” she said contentedly. “As much as I love you.”

How simple the lives of that couple seemed compared to her own, Penelope thought sadly. How lucky they were to feel and speak so easily of love…

Taking a breath and wiping her cheek, she made herself step back and smile at Maxwell. That line of thinking could lead her nowhere useful. Penelope and Maxwell had not married for love; they had married for other reasons, and she knew she should be grateful for what she had: a principled husband, a comfortable life, and protection from Lord Silverbrook.

She could not ask for more, even if she was beginning to want it. In fact, she must not allow herself to want it at all.

“We should find the others,” Penelope said, keeping her voice light and pleasant. “Thank you for the flowers.”

Penelope took the seat in the coach beside Victoria on the journey back to Walden Towers that evening, not wanting the disturbance to her equilibrium that sitting beside and touching Maxwell, even inadvertently, would cause. Still, she had not counted on the fact that this position meant that she must look at him, something that stirred her almost as deeply as his hand on hers would have done.

Her mood melancholy, she thought again of the young couple at the fair, so easy in their casual embrace and conversation, apparently without a care in the world. Any hopes Penelope might have had that Victoria would provide and enliven conversation were dashed when her sister-in-law sat back into the corner of the coach, closed her eyes with a yawn, and promptly fell asleep.

The silence that followed should not have been unpleasant, but it disturbed Penelope, feeling too intimate and, therefore, dangerous for her presently pensive state of mind.

“I think your sister tired herself out on the roundabout,” she observed when Maxwell smiled at Victoria’s light snores.

“Yes, Adam should have known better than to dare her that she could not push that roundabout by herself. She is as strong as an ox.”

“I thought he might be sick,” Penelope said, smiling despite herself. “I asked her to slow down for his sake rather than my own. His face was green.”

They laughed together for a moment, and then Maxwell’s face became serious again, a shift that Penelope was beginning to dislike.

“You liked the fair, didn’t you? And I think you have enjoyed visiting some of the villages and our neighbors around Walden Towers.”

“Well, yes,” Penelope agreed, wondering where this was going.

“The staff at Walden Towers are more than happy to have a Duchess of Walden there again too,” he mused. “There hasn’t been a wife to the duke there for almost thirty years — since my uncle’s wife died of fever. For establishing local connections and presence, a duchess might be even more use than a duke, I believe.”

“It is often the wives or mothers who run country estates,” Penelope commented, still none the wiser about what was actually on Maxwell’s mind.

“Exactly,” he said with a definite nod. “In London, men are more necessary for direct contacts in clubs, offices, parliament, and so forth. But in the country, it is the ladies who set the direction of society, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” she answered noncommittally.

“Right now, we must obviously be together, both in town and the country. But if we establish ourselves solidly this season as Duke and Duchess of Walden, there is no reason why we should not take a different approach next season.”

Now utterly bemused, Penelope could only stare at him and wait for further explanation of this odd statement.

“So, once my connections and position within the ton are secure, we might make more headway with you based at Walden Towers and me based in London. We would come together when required, of course. There could be no heir otherwise, could there?”

His evident amusement at these ideas shocked her even more than the words themselves, but what had she ever expected in a marriage of convenience?

“Anyway, key events of the season and bedroom duties aside, there is no reason why you should not hold the keys entirely to Walden Towers. If you brief me on local events I should be present for, I will attend, and I could do the same for you in London.”

“You want us to live separately?” Penelope questioned, barely able to force the words out. “You don’t want to keep me with you?”

“It might make more sense,” the duke reflected, shrugging casually as if merely discussing the arrangement of books on a shelf. “Knowing that you are an intelligent and honorable woman, I feel it’s safe to say that you may do as you please.”

“As long as I keep my side of our bargain, I suppose,” she said faintly.

“Exactly,” Maxwell said again. “It’s an interesting idea, don’t you think? We should discuss it more once the season is over, and we can plan further ahead.”

“I see. I am very tired, Maxwell and must rest now.”

Copying Victoria, she shifted to the corner of the seat, leaned her head on the coach walls, and closed her eyes, unable to face any more of this awful and incomprehensible discussion. It hurt Penelope to hear him say such things aloud, but worse than that, she feared she had no right to her own pain, given the nature of their arrangement.

Still, rightfully or not, with her husband’s words, her already fractured heart had broken apart.